A sabbatical from work is a tricky thing. There are all these questions from all corners. Most of these questions can be summarized down to… “Why? Are you crazy?”. Then there are all those thumping your back and saying, “Brave thing to do”, which as the Right Honorable Jim Hacker would tell you in “Yes Minister”, is just Sir Humphrey Appleby’s way of saying “This is political suicide”. I had my Why and I was determined to make the most of it, fervently hoping this wouldn’t end in political suicide.
My Why
The year was 2022. I had completed 31 years in the corporate world. For most of those 31 years, I had worked close to 6 days a week and 10 hours a day, plus endured about 2 hours of commute every day. No, I didn’t burn out. I enjoyed it. That was my idea of work-life balance, and I had my family’s support. In the last 12 years, I had moved into a business management role. In that short period, we went through about 6~7 major structural changes in our organization and I had worked under 7 different bosses. We had weathered the financial crisis that had gripped the Indian core industry in the early 2010s and the COVID pandemic towards the end. That was a very chaotic period, but we came out stronger and at peak performance. In 2022, we were headed for another major structural change, and honestly, I was bored of those tweaks. Business was at its peak, and we were delivering our best financial performance. What better time to step out, take a break and reset! That was the trigger for my Why.
Meanwhile, I realized that I had been through 3 different S-curves in my career (read more about career S-curves in the footnote). The first S-curve started as a junior project engineer on an aluminium mill and ramped up to being engineering and technology head for a division of my company’s Indian entity. That was a very technical phase, extremely hard work and extremely satisfying, though not very well paying. The second S-curve was as an entrepreneur that ended in us being acquired by my former employer. This, like any other entrepreneurial stint, was a very techno-commercial phase, and again extremely hard work and extremely satisfying. The third S-curve was as a business manager, back with my previous employer, starting with managing a local business and moving on to managing a larger international geography.
All along, I had largely worked in the same domain and with similar products and solutions. I wanted to experience something different. I wasn’t sure what. I realized that if I continued where I was, this change wasn’t likely to happen. This was my primary Why.
With my Why established, I quit my job at the end of 2022. At that time, my intention was to reach out to executive search firms and ask them to explore options outside my old normal. The idea of a sabbatical was still not born. But my family had different plans. They wanted to do a long international holiday coinciding with my daughter’s graduation in May of 2023. Starting a job search in January and expecting to take a month’s holiday in May didn’t seem practical. That led me to the conclusion that I had accidentally embarked on a sabbatical, and that my job search would have to wait until after the holiday. The sabbatical was born.
Once this realization set in, I also rationalized that ticking off some of my hobby wish list items was best done when I was still young and able to enjoy them, rather than after a full-blown retirement, by which time I was possibly less confident to push some boundaries. This became my secondary Why. I wanted to make the most of this opportunity and explore a variety of experiences.
Fortunately for me, I had three things going for me. First, I had the backing of my family to take this break. Secondly, financially speaking, I was confident to take a salary break. No, I’m not rich, but I know how to live within my means. And thirdly, I had sufficient hobbies and interests to keep me engaged endlessly. I believe all three are critical for a sabbatical. If any one of these is missing, the sabbatical would end prematurely and not with a happy ending.
So, having embarked on the sabbatical, what did I do? Quite a bit, actually. And pretty much a potpourri of things. Here are some of the major ones.
First off, I became an IRONMAN Certified Coach
As soon as I decided to quit, I registered with the IRONMAN University to train to be an IRONMAN Coach. No, this wasn’t to be a career choice. I wanted to learn the science of endurance sports training so I could apply it to myself. There was a background to this that you can read in the footnotes.
About 2 months of online course work and an exam later, I am now an IRONMAN Certified Coach. The course did a brilliant job covering various aspects like muscle physiology, kinematics of swimming, running and cycling, intensity and heart rate zones, sports nutrition and fuelling, strength and conditioning, and more. It culminates with how to build a training plan. As I write, they are updating the training material and making it more audio-visual. The theory is well covered. But in my opinion, to be a good coach, one needs to work for some time under a master coach. That is missing and explains why not all certified coaches are successful with all athletes. For me, this didn’t matter. I was after the theory so I could apply this to myself and for that purpose, this was a perfect choice.
It’s now almost two years since then, and the wealth of knowledge that I gained has helped me significantly in my own sports and fitness journey. I am immensely thankful that I did it.
A holiday in Vietnam
3rd January 2023. Separation formalities from work completed, and recovery from the New Year party accomplished, we headed out to Hanoi on a family holiday. We had only half a day in Hanoi and so, it was to be a hectic day from the moment we checked into our hotel. First stop was to try the Banh Mi Vietnamese sandwich for lunch. The highly rated Banh Mi 25 street side joint was just walking distance from our hotel, and it was yum! We then headed for the Temple of Literature which was very impressive. Next stop promised to be a fascinating experience at the famous train café’s that sit within touching distance from the railway line. Unfortunately, when we got there, we were disappointed to learn that the train services had been terminated. But it still made for some pretty pictures. We then strolled along to the Hoan Kiem Lake, from where we ambled along the Beer Street and stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. That was quite a productive evening.
The next morning, we headed out on a 3-day / 2-night Halong Bay cruise on The Elite of the Seas. That was exquisite. The ship was amazing, and the food and service was great, except for a fiasco with wasabi. It was meditative to be sitting in the balcony and watching the stunning views of the limestone islands as we slowly sailed past. This is where I got hooked to the Vietnamese egg coffee. Apart from the onboard facilities like the swimming pool, mini-golf and the sun deck, the cruise included an afternoon of canoeing, a local village sightseeing trip on bicycles and a boat ride into a couple of the hollow caves within some of the islands. Overall, this was a brilliant experience. A perfect family getaway.
At the end of the cruise, we headed to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) where we spent 2 nights experiencing the city, doing some flea market shopping and indulging in Vietnamese coffee. At the Xa Loi Buddhist temple we were intrigued to see that Oreo’s and mineral water bottles were part of the offerings to the Buddha. They sure have kept up with the times.
Next stop was the Poulo Condor Resort on Con Dao Island. When I booked that trip, my main intention was to head out diving. But it was the rainy season and diving was closed, and I had made a non-refundable booking. So, we headed out there anyway. We weren’t disappointed. It was a lovely beachside resort, nestled amongst the trees. We had a whale of a time for 3 days / 2 nights. I didn’t miss the diving.
Diving and Living off a Liveaboard
My first experience with SCUBA diving was in 2011, on an official trip to Manado Islands in Indonesia. That was a so-called Discover dive. I was hooked. I came back home and got myself certified as an Advanced Open Water SCUBA diver. Since then, I had done some 70-odd dives at various locations. Our holidays were typically family holidays and if that was a beachside holiday, my kids and I tried to sneak in a few dives. My wife isn’t a certified diver. So, all those dives had been while staying on land and heading out to sea by boat.
But then, I had heard about Liveaboards. They looked enticing. But a liveaboard would be a solo holiday dedicated to diving. Not something I would normally broach at home. But then, I was on a sabbatical 😊, and this became the next major item on my list. I booked a Liveaboard in Maldives.
Diving has always been an otherworldly experience for me. I used to dash off over the weekend from Bangalore to Pondicherry to dive every once in a while. The entire experience of preparing your gear, heading out to sea on boat, wallowing under water without a care in the world, bobbing around on the surface waiting for the next dive while watching fellow divers belch from sea sickness, and unwinding at the end of the day with a beer, helped me recharge.
But this liveaboard experience was at a completely different level. You wake up in the morning out in the middle of the ocean, watching a glorious sunrise like you’ve never seen before. Calm turquoise waters stretch as far as the eye can see. If you are lucky, you could see dolphins chasing their catch near the yacht. We did three dives a day at different dive sites. The dive sites, the corals and the marine life were just amazing, except for instances of coral bleaching. The yacht and rooms were excellent, the food was great, the dive equipment was well maintained, the fellow divers (we were about 10 of us) were great company and the dive guides were very professional. This was heaven on Earth, a dream life. I’m dying to do a liveaboard again! Read what a typical day on our Liveaboard was like in the footnotes.
I mentioned the coral bleaching. This is a real worry. The climate sceptics believe that climate change is a hoax. They need to see the graveyard of coral bleaching at some of these sites to recognize the reality. I remember diving in Maldives in 2018. It was horrible. If we don’t stop global warming and unsustainable fishing practices, we are a doomed species. Not because diving is no longer fun, but because the land ecosystem depends on the marine ecosystem and the marine ecosystem depends on corals. Instead of fish, sharks and whales, we are going to be left with just a lot of jellyfish in the sea.
Holiday in the USA and Egypt
This was the big and long holiday that got me into the sabbatical in the first place. My daughter was graduating from Purdue University in the US in May 2023, and was to start work in New York in August. The original idea was to do a big USA holiday, and then head back to India. But somewhere along the line, we changed the plan. We decided to do an abridged holiday covering Purdue and New York, and then head out to Egypt.
Purdue and New York
First stop Purdue. That was my first visit to that University. We spent 3 nights there, exploring the university grounds, eating at the student hangouts, attending the graduation, jogging around the lake, and helping daughter pack, and finally headed off to New York.
In New York, we started with the Museum of Natural History. Quite impressive, and we spent more time there than we expected. I was particularly enthralled by the taxidermy work in the Mammal Halls. Off we headed then to Times Square which of course is the exact opposite of Natural or History. The next morning, we covered The Wall Street, The Battery Park and the 9/11 Memorial, and wrapped that up with lunch at a very nice joint, The O’Hara’s Restaurant & Pub. We couldn’t do New York without doing a Broadway show. I had booked for The Lion King almost 3 weeks earlier and just about caught the last few seats. That was impressive and far exceeded our expectations. We followed that with a Hudson Bay cruise, which was just about OK. The next day we went cycling around Central Park (good), hit the must-do Magnolia Bakery (great) and headed out for some New York steak (no good). Somewhere in between all this, I also managed to go jogging around Central Park, get drunk with some college classmates of mine and do The Escape Room along with a bunch of other kids 😊. Overall, a very productive holiday.
Next stop… Cairo, Egypt.
I didn’t have the confidence to tour Egypt without a guide. So, I organized the entire tour through a guide. But I also don’t trust tour organizers with food or accommodation. So, I scoped that out and we handled that ourselves. Day 1, we visited the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx. No surprises there. And no surprises that the tour guide dragged us through shops trying to entice us into buying papyrus and other stuff that we didn’t need. We were back early enough at the hotel to go out to a Nile River dinner cruise. That was nice.
The next morning, we headed out to Alexandria where we visited The Roman Theatre and the Catacombs. This woke me up to what was in store for us in Egypt. Honestly, the Giza Pyramids hadn’t done that for me. Sure, the pyramids are from the 25th century BCE, and are an engineering marvel. But they didn’t pull at my heart strings. We also visited the Sidi Morsi Abu al-Abbas Mosque which had some intricate design work (worth visiting) and the Alexandria Library (not for me). We wrapped up that evening with a visit to the Khan Al-Khalili bazaar in Cairo, where I met up with a good friend of mine, and then headed to the Cairo Festival City Mall for dinner. Next morning was The Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Impressive place, but unfortunately, we were a bit short in time and our guide hurried us through faster than he should have. I wish we had spent more time there.
From Cairo, we headed to Aswan. I had booked a quaint little stay on the banks of the River Nile named Wanas Kato Guest House, and it was wonderful. The hosts were from the Nubian tribe and were extremely warm and hospitable. From there, we headed out early morning to see the Abu Simbel temples. The two temples bowled me over. They are mammoth structures cut into the rock mountain and were bult in the 13th century BCE. The beauty, the architectural excellence and the scale was like nothing I had ever seen before. And to think that this was done more than 3000 years ago is mind boggling.
From Abu Simbel, we headed for the Philae Temples dating to the 6th century BCE. Again, very impressive. What was also very impressive about both these sites was the quality of restoration and maintenance work. Both these temples had in fact been relocated to protect them from the rising lake and river waters. I wish our Indian monuments got the same level of attention.
From Aswan, we headed for Luxor. There are luxurious Nile River cruises that starts at Aswan, covering the Philae Temple and Abu Simbel, stop at the Edfu Temple enroute and reach Luxor on Day 4. We didn’t have the time and took the road instead. We started early morning and reached Luxor by 8 AM.
After the Abu Simbel temples, I was sure nothing could stun me more. But Luxor had further surprises in store for us. We started on the West Bank with the Valley of the Kings (15th to 10th century BCE), the Temple of Hatsheput (15th century BCE) and the Colossi of Memnon (13th century BCE). We then moved to the East Bank and visited the Karnak Tample (19th century BCE) and the Luxor Temple (14th century BCE). Each monument was unique and exceptional. You couldn’t tire from seeing them all.
At the end of this cultural trail of Egypt, I was in awe of the ancient Egyptians. I have always been a math and science guy. History just never clicked for me. As a tourist, I just enjoy the aesthetics of historical sites. So, when I headed for Egypt, I had no clue what I was in for. I now realize that I should have done some historical research before I headed there to fully appreciate what I was seeing. On the other hand, maybe that was good thing, because research might have taken away that element of surprise that made the trip so enjoyable. To imagine that 3000 or 4000 years ago people could be building such impressive monuments is mind blowing. I always thought India had a lot of historical monuments. But as far as I am aware, there isn’t much to show from the BCE era, and in fact most of what we have are from less than 1000 years ago. My Indian pride took quite a beating at the end of that trip. It was only recently, after reading William Dalrymple’s “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World”, some of that pride got restored.
That wasn’t the end of our Egypt holiday. We switched from history to contemporary, and headed from Luxor to Sharm el-Sheikh for 3 nights at the Reef Oasis Blue Bay Resort. The resort included a dive center and had an impressive house reef. I headed out into the Red Sea for boat dives on two of the days. One of those was my 100th dive. The family enjoyed the house reef dives on the first day, while my daughter accompanied me for the boat dives the second day. The resort itself was very nice with excellent restaurants, pools, and other facilities. And it goes without saying that diving in the Red Sea was brilliant. Overall, a perfect end to our three-week holiday.
One of the challenges with these long holidays is around handling our pets. We have two dogs, one of them a senior, and we have never been happy leaving them in a kennel. This time, we got ourselves a pet sitter. She was just wonderful. She took care of the dogs like they were her own, and we could see that they were perfectly happy when we returned. Not the “get me out of here” kind of happiness that you see when you meet your pets at a kennel, but just the happiness that says, “welcome back home”. Without her, I am sure the holiday would have been only half as fun.
Independent Director Certification
While a lot of the sabbatical was to be around fun and family, and doing now what I would otherwise have done only after retirement, there was also some professional development that I wanted to invest time in. I believed that getting certified as an Independent Director from the Ministry of Company Affairs could be worth the while. So, I got down to that and after about a month of self-study, I wrote the exam and am now a Certified Independent Director.
Certified Freediver
Sometime around the Red Sea diving in Egypt, my daughter and I started to get curious about freediving. We figured that our dive center in Pondicherry was also doing freediving courses, and we headed there. Like all dive certification courses, there is theory to learn, and I was surprised with a lot that I learnt. I was always sure that I could hold my breath longer on land than under water. Before the course, my breath hold time on land was about 1:00 min. During the course, I was able to do a 1:30 breath hold on land. Mightily impressed. Imagine my surprise when I held my breath for almost 3:00 min in water! You learn about the mammalian dive reflex, the higher partial pressure of O2 under water that allows normal oxygenation even with depleted O2 concentrations, the risk of blackout near the surface, the safety procedures, etc. Nice.
At the end of 3 days, we were certified free divers and had learnt quite a lot. Happy to have ticked that one also off. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much opportunity to practice free diving since then. Unlike SCUBA diving, free diving needs regular practice.
My Fitness Journey
Like I mentioned in relation to my IRONMAN Coach certification, I ended 2022 with an Achilles Tendonitis injury. This was only a symptom of an overall mobility problem that I had. So, I was determined to fix this at its root. I figured that The Padukone – Dravid Centre for Sports Excellence (CSE), where I had my swimming pool membership, also housed a highly qualified physiotherapy center named Vesoma. They treated the elite athletes that attended CSE. I went there with my problems. The physiotherapist warned me to be patient and not get back to running anytime too soon. This was the same advice I had ignored in my run up to the IRONMAN event in 2022. This time, I was determined to do it right and learn the preventive techniques. At the end of months of dry needling, muscle release, and strength and conditioning, I was back to being able to run painlessly. This culminated with my personal best timing at the Bangalore Half-marathon in Oct ‘23. I also extended their treatment to my shoulder mobility since that was hampering my swim. Got some pretty good gains there too. Later, I also tied up with a really good personal trainer at my local Cult.fit to keep up my focus on strength work that I had ignored in the past.
Overall, I logged 386hrs of activity that year, excluding pre- and post-workout work. I ended the year with the distinction of being among the “Top 2% most active on Strava for 2023” and could feel the improved fitness.
Almost on top of the world… at The Everest Basecamp
After my USA-Egypt trip, I had started to reach out to executive search firms for my next career move. This was turning out to be quite a slow and inefficient process. Meanwhile, I started to be intrigued by the Everest Basecamp trek. I had never done any meaningful trekking before, just a couple of short day-hikes while on holiday. I registered with a Nepal based trek organizer to do this trek mid-October. I had neither the experience with multiday trekking, nor the gear for the same. The EBC trek is meant to be difficult. First off, I spent quite a bit of time researching and searching for trekking shoes since I’ve got very wide feet and couldn’t find any wide trekking shoes in India. Importing one was a fitment risk, but I had no option. I ordered shoes on Salomon in UK to be shipped to my niece in London who was to hand it over to my friend who was visiting Europe around that time. Fortunately, all the logistics worked out, and the shoes reached me in time, and were a perfect fit. Next challenge was clothing. Temperatures go sub-zero on the trek, and I had no clue what layering meant. Fortunately, there were enough videos explaining layering along with recommendations for packing. I systematically geared up over two months and was ready for the challenge.
This trek warrants a separate blog, by itself. Suffice to say that this was a most enjoyable experience. The landscapes were spectacular. Luckily, our trek group was an assorted fun bunch. Most of us were solo entries, and hence there was no groupism. We gelled very well together and had a whale of a time. Everyone was a stickler for time, and we never had to wait for someone to start the day. The metal and physical challenge was just at the right level, not easy, but not extreme either. The weather didn’t throw any nasty surprises, except for a day’s delay at the start when flights to Lukhla got grounded due to bad weather. But again, we were lucky because trekkers from previous days had had to wait for up to a week due to rains and winds. The Accommodation enroute the trek was very hospitable. There was just a small snafu with our sherpa that left a bad taste. This trek has got me hooked to trekking. Damn, another hobby to pursue! But just shows that this was the right time in my life to experience something like this. Would I have had the confidence to head out to EBC 10 years hence if I hadn’t experienced this now? I am not too sure.
The End
Before I headed out on my EBC trek, I had already been approached by an executive search firm with a job prospect. It had all the trappings of my dream job, and I was a serious contender. The change in portfolio and domain was exactly as I had desired. By the end of the year, this firmed up. The risk I took of leaving a well-established job to take on a sabbatical worked well for me. All’s well that ends well.
The year was extremely productive, and full of new experiences and learnings. I managed to tick off a lot of wish list items. If you ask me which of those experiences I enjoyed the most – was it the Vietnam trip or Egypt, or was it the Liveaboard or the EBC trek, or what about my Ironman Coach certification and the fitness journey? Honestly, I have no answer. Each was special in its own way. I’m glad I did this while still young and fit, and that I transitioned smoothly back into working life, into a job I was sure was exactly what I was looking for.
For those contemplating a sabbatical from work, there’s a caveat here though. I found that most executive search firms were skeptical of a career break. They don’t seem to trust mavericks. I guess they couldn’t believe that someone would leave a well-paying job for the reasons I mentioned. The political risk of a sabbatical from work is real. In many ways, I have always been a maverick with my career. At the time I graduated, I was one of the few in my batch that stayed back in India and took on a technical job. When we started our entrepreneurship in 2007 after having worked 16 years, I had peanuts in savings and survived the initial period off my retirement fund. Most people saw my move from a very technical background into the management line as another surprising move. For me, taking this break was just another such move. Being a maverick always worked for me. Maybe I have been lucky. Or maybe, it’s the endurance athlete in me. I don’t rush things. I believe that if I put in the work, the results will eventually show.
Footnotes
About Career S-Curves
As a control engineer, S-curves weren’t new to me. In fact, I was first introduced to them when a professor at college came in late to class because he broke his car’s axle over an Indian speed breaker. He came in saying “this is a good example of why it is important for the differential to be a continuous function”, and proceeded to draw the profile of an S-curve versus the bump of an Indian speed breaker 😊. But that is engineering.
Ravi Venkatesan in his book “What the Heck Do I Do with My Life?” refers to S-curves in the context of one’s career. He says that in the old days a career resembled a ladder. You steadily climbed the ladder till you reached the top and then you waited for retirement. That construct is obsolete. In today’s world, he models one’s career as a series of S-curves, like in a product lifecycle. As you saturate in one phase of your career, you need to reinvent yourself and launch into the next phase. It’s like shifting gears in a car, moving to higher and higher gears till you hit peak potential.
I liked this model. It was simple and it made sense. It was also a good way of explaining why some high performing employees complain about missing out on promotions. They typically haven’t been reinventing themselves and readying for the next role. They think a good performance in the current role justifies a promotion. They don’t realize that demonstrating attributes for the next role while in the current role is what leads to a promotion.
The background to why I decided to be a certified IRONMAN Coach
I had completed the IRONMAN 70.3 in Goa end-2022. It had been an uphill training journey for the past 2 years. I frequently struggled with injuries, and I struggled with my swim. I had a swim coach trying to fix my swim, a triathlon coach working on my run and bike endurance, and a physiotherapist working on my injuries. The three were uncoordinated. For example, when I was on a recovery week from my triathlon coach, my swim coach was probably working on the build phase. In another instance, the day after a hard and long bike workout, my physiotherapist put me on a heavy strength workout, causing a severe knee injury. Ultimately, I reached the start line on race day limping with a severe Achilles tendonitis. My Tri coach encouraged me to still give it a shot since I was already there and had put in all the hard work. God bless him! It was nothing short of a miracle that I could complete the race with about 30min to spare. Just the walk from the swim end to the bike transition was an excruciating limp, imagine what the half-marathon after the 90KM bike ride was like!
The reality is that when you are 50+ and injury prone and don’t have a history of athletics, there is only a thin line between a productive workout and an injury. You need someone with a good overview to keep you safely on that thin line. Since I didn’t have access to an in-person coach, I realized that this someone could only be me. I needed the ability to tweak a workout at a moment’s notice in case I felt my body wasn’t prepared for it. I needed to learn the science of endurance sports. When the sabbatical was born, this became my first target. A quick google search landed me at the IRONMAN University site. It was an online course, and I registered. I was fortunate because IU soon stopped new registrations for quite an extended period.
A typical Day on our Maldives Liveaboard
From the airport, we were whisked away by boat to the mother yacht, Carpe Vita. She was a real beauty and was to be my home for the next 8 days. I had been to Maldives a few times before, but always in a resort. This was the first time in my life that I was going to be staying out at sea. And what better place to do that, than over the calm and clear turquoise waters of Maldives! A typical day started at 5:30AM, watching the sunrise from the top deck while sipping on an invigorating cup of tea, as the yacht anchored in the middle of the ocean. We would then assemble in the lower deck for a dive briefing and then get into the dive boat. Yes, there was a separate dive boat that took us to the dive sites since the yacht was too big and risked damaging the reefs. We would be back on the yacht from the first dive by about 9AM, hungry for what was always a sumptuous breakfast. Meanwhile, the captain would move us close to the next dive site, and we would head out around 11AM for the second dive of the day. This was followed by an excellent lunch and an afternoon siesta, while the yacht moved to yet another dive spot that we did around 4PM. Back on board, after some snacks we’d freshen up for the evening and dinner was served. The food was always great. I abstained from alcohol until the last night lest I spoil the dive experience. I was always early to bed so I could again catch the sunrise next morning. I could never tire of that. This cycle repeated for 7 days. I wish it didn’t end!
The KD Chronicles 
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